In development: A trial variety of orange shows off its seedless insides.

ABC Rural: Emma Brown

"I can't say why that is, but certainly in the Philippines we've put a lot of effort in marketing and working in partnership with the Victorian Government and AusTrade to do point-of-sale material and work with their supermarkets.

"We never really thought it would happen this quickly or we would see such substantial volumes.

"In my first trip to the Philippines I didn't think we'd do much more than a handful of containers per year. Six thousand tonnes is quite a surprise."

Business news publisher Forbes placed the Philippines is the second-fastest growing economy in east Asia, second only to Lao and ahead of China, in its March analysis.

Mr Daniels said now that Australia has a strong foothold in many markets the challenge is for growers to produce fruit tailored for foreign consumers.

"It really is about growing to market requirements and knowing what the end consumer wants," he said.

"What size fruit, what grade, how sweet they want it. And there are certain cultural practices.

"The good growers are doing that already, they are growing their crops specifically for a market and have been doing that for the last 20 years."

Months of unexplained night-time power outages in Queensland's Isis district leave farmers, already struggling with high electricity and water prices, unable to reliably irrigate crops in the crucial summer period.